After three years, a music feature, and a bunch of gorgeous music videos, Boys & Frogs has decided to call it quits. But it's not so much an ending as beginning, according to songwriter Michael Alexander.
"I just think it was time for me, personally, to move on. I've been trying to avoid calling it a breakup because it wasn't [just] my band, I never really believed that. It was part my band, but part is the important word to use. I didn't want to dissolve something that I didn't have full ownership of, so the way that I addressed it was that I was just leaving and some people say that's essentially the same thing because they couldn't do it without everybody. But it wasn't mine to say this is done, so I guess it can still be going, but I don't know if it's going to happen without me," says Alexander.
I sat down for a cup of coffee with Michael Alexander to discuss what happened to Boys & Frogs and where his new band, Emby Alexander is heading.
Emby Alexander plays its first show on Friday, April 27 at The Lost Leaf with Bogan Via.
Check out Emby Alexander's first single, "Drag the Long Way Home," after the jump.
Michael Alexander is still working out the details, but he intends for Emby Alexander to be a five- to seven-member band. The band's first single, "Drag the Long Way Home," started out with Alexander mixing drum samples, guitar, and glockenspiel on his own, then invited Daniel Seckler and Kyle Grabski of Boys & Frogs to contribute as well.
"I wouldn't call it eclectic, but all of the influences that were subtle [with Boys & Frogs], we'll go down each of those paths further. I don't want to say they'll be genre songs, but something like if we wanted a song to be more punk rock, something more aggressive is going to happen, like over-the-top aggressive, and the balance will be so soft. I'm a huge fan of dynamics and extremes, both extremely loud and extremely quiet, extremely emotional, extremely pop in surface, so just everything will be heightened in such an exaggerated way," Alexander says.
He adds, "I definitely want it to be that if you don't want to listen to the words that it's danceable and there's a driving rhythm the entire time. I don't consider myself an expert probably in any genre, but definitely dance. I don't know if it's "genre" dance, but dance as far as 'Does it make you want to dance?'"
If Boys & Frogs has any future, Alexander won't be a part of it. "It already seems old and dated to me," he says.
Emby Alexander is already making plans to record a music video for "Drag the Long Way Home." They once again recruited Trevvor Riley, who directed "Lay Your Wet Hair Down" and the Miniature Tigers time-lapse video.
"I like the meaning of a music video so much that I think we're going to be single-oriented for awhile. I'll just release them one at a time for awhile with music videos. We've already shot some stuff . . . more live-esque videos, not the choreographed kind of videos, but we have a big choreographed video coming directed and art directed and all that too," Alexander says.
